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CALIBURN
CALIBURN was a top secret ONI project designed to surpass and supplant the current UNSC mechanized walkers as well as revolutionize the UNSC's military capabilities against both Covenant and Insurrectionist threats, as well as provide a new weapon that could effectively deal with the 'Super Soldier crisis' ONI was beginning to forsee. Using new advances in Artificial Intelligence, Forerunner technology, and military developments, CALIBURN was intended to be the first of a new class of super weapon, loyal to ONI, the UNSC and her interests. However, CALIBURN's outrageous price per model, multiple psychotic outbreaks with its prototypical AI during testing, and the combined lack of UNSC interest and an inability to sell the design to private businesses resulted in its ultimate failure. The first and only prototype was to be scrapped and its internals used for other purposes as a result. However, as the Created made their first move, ONI found itself having to simply abandon the prototype, leaving it to die in its own testing grounds. By the intervention of the Created however, CALIBURN would awaken once more, enhanced by its new masters and sent onto the hated battlefield, a war machine masquerading as a bringer of peace and prosperity to the galaxy. Super Soldier Crisis By 2556, the Office of Naval Intelligence was reaching the height of its power, and at the same time beginning to grow ever more paranoid. They had begun to see enemies in every last crevice and stone of society, from the Private Sector to the Outer Colonies, to even the United Earth Government itself. Thus, as several Corporations began unveiling their own super soldiers, whether in private meets between their Boards or to the public eye, the hawkish eye of ONI could not help but stare intensely. Even though said 'Privatized Spartans' were generally small in numbers and overall inferior to the Spartan Branch, ONI began to fear the possibility of their inevitable reduction in cost and simplified augmentation process, as well as the enticement of higher wages over the desire to keep Earth and her Colonies safe from the perils within and without. Thus, ONI had begun funding several projects, both to improve upon their own Spartans, and to eventually eliminate and weaken the effects of most Spartans on the field of battle. Out of these projects came CALIBURN, ironically a privately funded venture by the still relatively obscure HIDEO-DELTORO corporation into improving upon the UNSC's current walker, the Mantis. Upon seeing promising results from many of the corporation's initial prototypes, ONI had given the corporation a blank check to begin work on CALIBURN, a new weapon to surpass all previous walkers both UNSC and Covenant. Development of a War Machine What am I, really? Upon CALIBURN's first initial experimental startup, things began smoothly. The seven AI fused together to create CALIBURN had initially worked in sync properly, and when tested with a pilot, the system worked as intended. However, when used in its unmanned configuration, cracks began to start showing. For starters, the newly formed AI, previously giving off only silence, had emerged, utterly confused as to its purpose. It had taken the form of a sort of conjoined horror, several body parts and strange objects making up its holographic appearance, all taken from its previous incarnations. Things had only become worse when the Smart AI overseeing the project, a newly commissioner Wrathia, had begun to interact with CALIBURN's AI, who had finally identified itself only as Arthur. Through some strange occurrences, the AI began to act irrationally, reacting violently to commands and on occasion going on rampages, its destructive efforts only tempered by its isolation at its testing grounds and its lack of ammunition. As a result, scientists had agreed to simply deactivate and eventually remove the prototype AI system with either a more conventional AI layout with all of the post prototype designs. However, in secret, the AI in question had begun speaking with the tortured soul within, trying to see what had caused it to go so mad, looking into its mind and reactivating it whenever possible. Arthur had seemingly gone insane from realizing what it truly was, an abortion of science and dead minds, and had asked the AI, Wrathia, about his true purpose. When she had told him what his true purpose was, he had gone berserk once more, realizing that he was to be nothing more than a simple killing machine on the battlefield. In his rampage, he had angrily renounced his initial name of Arthur, instead taking the moniker of CALIBURN as his true name, a symbol as his status as nothing more than ONI's latest and greatest sword, regardless of his own fractured mind. It was in this rampage that a fully armed CALIBURN would attempt to exact vengeance, attacking any living creature it saw mindlessly, and taking the lives of several scientists. It would then inadvertently prove its worth against the enemy it was designed against, as several Spartan IV's were sent in to eliminate the now wild beast, its awesome firepower put to good use against its foes, wiping out several of what were supposed to be humanities greatest soldiers in a fell swoop, before finally being deactivated by a sorrowful Wrathia.